


Sleet

by StopitGerald



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Adopted Children, Angst, Character Death, Child Death, Loss of Child, On the Run, description of sickness/death, fleeing from the templars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:40:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28211778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StopitGerald/pseuds/StopitGerald
Summary: Anders and Hawke have tried to move on from what happened in Kirkwall.Tried to bring the children they’d taken into his clinic to a city that’s not in ruin.There was never a chance for them all to make it.
Relationships: Anders/Female Hawke
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8





	Sleet

**Author's Note:**

> In my canon- Hawke is NB/They/Them, and they and Anders adopt several orphans. I mention their biological daughter, which ik is canon-breaking cuz he’s a GW- but... indulge me lol
> 
> Just a sad tidbit of the one child they lose in their times together

Kedran is only 7 years old when they lay him to rest.

Traveling the harsh, wintery peaks of the mountains across North Fereldan has proven to be too much for any child, in time, but Kedran was small. Kedran was skinny, clumsy, and the kindest little elven boy that one could ever meet. 

He slipped in the ice and slush and cut his little foot on a rock. The barebones bindings wrapped around his feet provided no protection against the angled edge of the stone, his caretakers hadn’t managed to protect his little soles.

Sepsis set into the wound quickly, with nothing to treat the gash, and nothing to ward off infection, it proved fatal. His guardians had hardly any strength to carry even his tiny frame when he grew too faint to walk. Then, he grew warm to the touch, despite the frigid air, shivering and sweating, his droplets turning to frost against paling, balmy skin. 

Hawke carried him. Their back bowed and ached and pinched, with one of the tiniest babes of their nine children, only two years of age, strapped to their chest, and Kedran tied firmly to their back with a makeshift sling. It is the heaviest load they’ve ever carried.

Not the weight, but the knowledge that these children may not survive the journey over the mountains into safer territory, the knowledge that they and their partner may not even survive this. 

Fleeing into the mountains from the templars became their only choice. And with these nine children in tow, all orphans taken in by two sets of loving hands, its only become more apparent that they have no supplies, no preparation, and almost no hope.

Only one of the children is not an orphan. The two year old, nestled closely to Hawke’s heart. It is their daughter, Hawke and Anders, their flesh and blood. It doesn’t make the other children less beloved, or less important, but it is… different.

All of their eight adoptees were over the age of four at their first meetings, aside from one, a little Dwarven boy they named after Bodhan for his service and kindness to them in their time in Kirkwall.

And little Kedran, the Dalish runt growing up alone in Darktown, he’d been 5, and then he was seven.

Anders has not cried like this, from the gut, from the throat, face painfully scrunched against his palms, scrubbing frozen tears from his eyes, not since the last time he thought Mallory had died. A while ago, now.

Kedran had begun fading when they tucked into a nook in the boulders and crags on the mountainside for the night, shaking and quiet, unable to speak, freezing cold. No matter how hard Anders tried- he couldn’t beat infection with magic, not without help from herbs and poultices, of which they had none.

Hawke had cradled him close, away from the eyes of the other children, all teary and mortified and exhausted themselves, watching their little brother fade away in their parents arms.

Anders huddled them together, scraped together what he could for them to eat, to drink, swaddled them with what blankets he had, and joined Hawke just outside the hole in the mountainside to wrap his arms around their shoulders and rest his face against their neck, and touch their boy’s face

The ground is much too solid with permafrost to bury him when he passes.


End file.
